What Reactions mean for the Facebook Algorithm

We’ve all seen them on Facebook. Instead of the word “like” you’re now seeing “reactions.” You may get notifications like “Your posts got 50 reactions this week.” Facebook has effectively changed likes to reactions. Even if you simply “like” a post rather than “love” it or react with a sad face, it all still counts as a like.

What do Reactions Mean Currently?

They seem pretty straightforward, but can actually mean a lot more if you manage a Facebook page. Right now, every type of reaction, like, love, etc. all means the same thing. But that’s all about to change.

Facebook claims that in the future their algorithm will change, and different reactions will be weighted differently, which could influence the type of content you see.

How Reactions are valued

No need to worry. Facebook claims they haven’t figured out how things are going to be weighted, yet. But the change will come eventually. The reactions could determine what someone sees in their newsfeed. A post with more happy face reactions could be more featured in the newsfeed, than a post with more sad face reactions.

This also means that it would be in Facebook’s hands to start making judgement calls about the content that most people want to see. For example, your newsfeed could become a place where only “loved” posts are shown, and sadder or more serious posts are filtered out.

Potential to Filter Content

By giving users the ability to react to things with emotions, Facebook is getting quite the insight into its user’s emotions, and how emotion’s can potentially influence behaviors.

Facebook has claimed that by adding reactions, they’re trying to help users see more types of the kind of content that they want to see.

There’s no sign of when Facebook may drop the algorithm change for reactions. But that change is coming eventually.

Take Away

There’s no need to scramble how you’ll dissect the results you’ll get once this change hits. It appears to be far off. But it’s good to know that a change like this is coming, if you manage a small business page. Consider how a spread out number of likes could affect your analytics numbers. This could depend on if the varied reactions are specified in reporting tools. Either way, soon a “like” will not just be a like, it will hold different meaning and therefore mean different things for business and your social media page.